Drowning Her Sorrows
by Tuxedo Mark
Summary: A sequel to "Kootie Pie Rocks" of the AoSMB3 cartoon series. In the aftermath of the Milli Vanilli lyp-sync scandal, Peach feels a sense of betrayal and copes with it in the only way that she knows how.


**The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3**

**"Drowning Her Sorrows"**

**Written By Mark Moore**

Author's note: This is a follow-up to the now-infamous "Kootie Pie Rocks" episode, which revolved around the pop duo Milli Vanilli (Princess Toadstool was a _huge_ fan and had to help rescue them in time for their concert, which she attended). Following the admission that Milli Vanilli were lip-syncers, all subsequent broadcasts of the episode were edited to remove the songs, some spoken lines, and some footage, and the original master tape is rumored to have been destroyed or lost. I recently (no more than four days before I started writing it) had the idea to write a fic on how Princess Toadstool would be effected by the news.

Writing times for this story: Sunday, June 16, 2019, 7:29 PM - 10:13 PM; Monday, June 17, 2019, 5:07 PM - 6:18 PM, 7:08 PM - 8:31 PM, 10:00 PM - 10:16 PM; Tuesday, June 18, 2019, 1:44 PM - 2:33 PM; Wednesday, June 19, 2019, 9:26 AM - 10:24 AM

Feedback is appreciated. Enjoy the story.

The following story is copyright © 2019 by Mark Moore.

* * *

**November 12, 1990**

Princess Peach Toadstool gasped. "No!"

Mario and Luigi ran into the princess' room at her exclamation. They found her staring at the TV screen, her jaw hanging in shock.

"What is it, Princess?!" Mario asked, worried.

Peach just continued to stare slack-jawed at the screen.

Mario was definitely concerned now. "C'mon, Princess, you can talk to me. If there's a problem, yo, I'll solve it."

"Milli Vanilli!" Peach exclaimed.

"What about them?" Mario asked.

"Did they die?" Luigi asked.

Mario elbowed his brother.

"Worse! They're a bunch of phonies!" Peach started crying. "They're lip-syncers! I can't believe it! My favorite musicians, and they aren't even real singers!" Peach flipped off the image of the pop duo on her TV with both hands.

Mario put a hand on Peach's right shoulder. "I'm sorry, Princess. This must be tough on you."

"How do you feel?" Luigi asked.

"You wanna know how I feel?!" Peach stood up and walked over to her closet. She dug out her Milli Vanilli sweatshirt and tossed it on the floor. Then she went over to her stereo, ejected her _Girl You Know It's True_ cassette, and threw it and its case onto her sweatshirt. Then she walked over to a wall and tore off her Milli Vanilli poster. She threw it on the pile. Then she walked over to her window, hit a power block just outside, and powered up with the fire flower that came out of it. She turned and unleashed a fireball at her Milli-merch, the objects of all of her rage and sorrow, sending them up in flames.

Luigi ran over, took off his hat, and tried to beat the flames out. Peach stormed toward the door.

Mario turned toward her. "Princess, if you wanna talk-"

Peach didn't look at him. "Not right now, Mario. I need to be alone and work my way through this."

She headed to the staircase and slid down the banister.

Toad walked over to her. "Hey, Princess, what's shakin'?"

Peach walked past him. "Toad, make yourself useful and put out the fire in my room."

"Yipe!" Toad ran upstairs.

Peach headed for a warp pipe and jumped into it.

* * *

Peach dashed through the streets of Brooklyn and found a bar. The neon red "OPEN" sign in the window was a beacon of hope to her amidst the grey gloom of the city. Rain was starting to come down hard, and she was getting wet. She opened the door and walked into the dry, warm establishment.

Her sneakers made almost no sound as she walked across the hardwood floor and over to the counter. There were a couple other people at the counter, and two other people played pool nearby. Other than that, it was relatively slow.

Peach sat on an empty stool. The bartender, a burly, bald man with a goatee, walked over to her and eyed her suspiciously.

Peach raised her right index finger. "I'll have a beer, please."

"You're a little young, ain't ya?"

Peach rolled her eyes and took her wallet out of her blue jeans pocket. She opened it and took out her totally authentic New York driver's license, which she had had made for occasions such as this. She presented it to the bartender. Upon being presented with the irrefutable proof that she was, in fact, twenty-one years old, he gave the license back to her. She put it away.

"So what kind of beer do you want?"

"Something not too bitter, for there is already plenty of bitterness within me."

"Um, okay." The bartender got a bottle out of the cooler and opened it for her. "$2.00."

Peach took the money out of her wallet and paid him. He collected the money and walked away. Peach picked up her bottle and sipped her beer, which she found pleasant.

* * *

An hour had passed. The rain was coming down heavy now. Lightning flashed outside. Thunder crashed. The lights briefly went out but then came back on.

"Great Mushroom Goddess, that was close!" Peach exclaimed.

"Great who?" the bartender asked in confusion. "I blame it on the rain."

"Do not say those words!" Peach screamed in rage, pointing a warning finger at him.

"Hey, chill, lady. I didn't mean anything by it."

Peach sighed. "It's not _your_ fault. It's _theirs_."

"Whose?"

"Milli Fucking Vanilli, that's who!" Peach gulped the rest of her beer. "Gimme another one."

He briefly glanced at the three empty bottles that he'd already tossed in the recycling bin. "You sure?"

"I have the money. All of those gold coins get me a lot of cash."

The bartender threw her empty bottle in the bin, opened another bottle of beer for her, and set it on the counter. "I mean, like, you don't need to drive anywhere, do ya?"

"Hey, I ain't goin' out in this weather. Besides, when I wanna go home, I'll just jump in the warp pipe, and I'll be back in my castle."

"Are you on drugs?"

"What? No. I do some magic mushrooms sometimes, though, and I can touch a flower, and it'll make me shoot fire, and I can touch a magic leaf, and I can fly like a raccoon and whack things with my tail-"

"Uh-huh. Forget I asked. So you're a Milli Vanilli fan, huh?"

"I _was_ a Milli Vanilli fan - until today. I just found out that they're a couple phonies! They lip-sync!"

"Wow, that sucks. I'm sorry, babe."

"I was their greatest fan!" Peach sobbed. She picked up her beer and chugged it for a while. "Can you turn on the radio, please?"

"Sure." The bartender turned around and turned on the radio.

"I'm in love, girl. I'm so in love, girl. I'm just in love, girl. And this is true. Girl, you know it's true."

"More like 'Girl, you know it's a fucking lie!'" Peach yelled. "Change the station!"

The bartender changed the station.

"Oh, Daddy dear, you know you're still number one, but girls, they wanna have fun."

Peach smiled. "Much better. Thanks."

"Sure."

Peach finished her beer. "Gimme something stronger."

"You sure?"

"Sure, I'm sure." Peach raised her hand.

The bartender threw the bottle in the bin, got a shot glass, set it on the counter, and filled the glass with whiskey. "So...you must've been a really big fan of them, huh?"

"Oh, don't get me started. I lived and breathed Milli Vanilli." Peach picked up the glass and gulped down the whiskey. As she set the glass down, she closed her eyes and stuck out her tongue, repulsed by the taste. "More, please."

The bartender poured her another shot. She immediately drank it.

Peach set the glass down. "There was no one more devoted to them than me! Why, I embarked on a mission to rescue them when they were kidnapped last month by a reptile king for his bratty daughter. I even performed as part of their backup band. Well, Happy Fucking Halloween! The trick was on me!" Peach began to sob. "I can't _begin_ to describe how their _betrayal_ of my trust - and the trust of all of their other, though lesser, fans - has effected me! It's shaken me to the very core of my being! My _core_, I say! If you can't trust Milli Vanilli, then can you truly trust _anyone_? I used to pause when I said 'fabulous', like 'fab-ulous', because of Fab, y'know? I used to refer to vanilla as 'vanilli'. Such was my devotion! I'd say 'I'll have some vanilli ice cream, please.' But, seriously, who the fuck eats _just_ vanilla ice cream? People with boring sex lives, _that's_ who! At the very least, it should be a chocolate-vanilla swirl. That's kind of what Rob is. Well, no more 'vanilli' for me!" Peach tapped her glass. "Vodka - with a splash of vanill_a_, please."

The bartender filled it.

Peach picked up the glass, drank the vodka, let out a series of coughs, set the glass down, and beat her chest. "Holy shit out of Lakitu's ass! Anyway, on days like these, when I was feeling lonely, I'd put on some fucking Milli Vanilli, get naked, and masturbate while fantasizing about Rob and Fab gangbanging me. They'd whisper in my ears whenever their mouths weren't otherwise occupied. But that stops today! I'm quitting Milli Vanilli cold turkey! Rob and Fab can suck my ass! Actually, no, they can't! I forbid it! I'm a princess, y'know. A _real_ princess. They even said I was when I attended their concert. But it came from them, so it's possibly another fucking lie! I must reevaluate my whole life!" Peach dropped her head face-first onto the counter. She sobbed, and then she started humming, and then: "Boys, you know it's true. Ooh, ooh, ooh-ooh-ooh. I fucking hate you. Lah-dee-dah-dee-doo. Ooh, hoo, hoo-hoo-hoo..."

Just then, the door opened and closed, and Peach could hear approaching footsteps.

"Princess?"

Peach recognized that voice. She slowly raised her head, spun around on her stool, and instantly regretted it. She put her hands to her head and waited for the spinning to stop. "Fuuuck..."

Finally, she looked up and saw two - and sometimes four - mustached men in front of her.

Peach smiled. "Mario! Luigi! My pasta-powered purveyors of propriety!" She briefly looked at the bartender while jerking a thumb at the brothers. "These are the two plumbers that help me defend my kingdom against the evil army of the Koopas!"

The bartender nodded. "Uh-huh."

"Princess, how long have you been here?" Luigi asked.

"And how much have you had?" Mario asked.

"Lots! La-la-la-la-lots!" Peach exclaimed, grinning goofily and letting her tongue hang out.

"All right. You ready to go home?" Mario asked.

"In a bit. Oh, hang on." Peach suddenly felt sick. She turned aside and threw up on the floor. Vomit dangled from her lips. She coughed the rest of it out of her mouth. She sat up straight. "Great, now my stomach's empty."

The bartender looked at the floor and shook his head. "Jesus Christ."

"Okay, let's get the fuck outta here." Peach tried to stand up.

Mario and Luigi each supported one of her arms, and they helped her stand up.

"Hey, wait a minute! You still owe me for the rest of the drinks!" the bartender told her.

"Oh, yeah." Peach dug into a back pocket and pulled out a gold coin. She placed it on the counter. "Will this cover it?"

The bartender picked up the coin and studied it. He bit into it and then grinned. "Yes, ma'am! Come back anytime!"

Peach waved as they headed for the door. "I will! Bye-bye!"

At the far end of the bar, another patron threw up on the floor.

"Preach it, buddy!" Peach cheered.

"Oh, for crying out loud!" the bartender exclaimed.

Peach, Mario, and Luigi walked outside, where it was still raining hard. They waited under the roof.

"So did you work through whatever you needed to work through, Princess?" Mario asked.

"Yeah, I sure did. I'm totally over Milli Vafuckinilli!"

"That's good."

"From now on, I'm the greatest fan of Cyndi Lauper!" Peach declared, raising her left fist triumphantly in the air. "Maybe we can go to one of her concerts sometime. You know her, don't you, Mario?"

"Uh, well..."

The rain let up a bit. The trio started walking.

Luigi grinned. "Hey, I've got an idea! Since you blew chunks all over that guy's floor, why don't we order a couple pizzas?"

"Only if it's Domino's!" Mario added.

Peach grinned. "Great idea, Luigi! And then I'll go home, put on _She's So Unusual_, and she-bop my fucking brains out!"

**The End**


End file.
